Street Signs

[EVCco]

EVCco: I found the use of the classic Toronto "acorn" street signs quite interesting...

These signs are to me a Toronto classic and I especially like the Downtown Milton variation...

That Village of Thornhill cast sign is also very noteable...Is that cast steel,iron or aluminum?

These signs are much more attractive to me then newer types like what Toronto is now using...

LI MIKE

The acorn definitely is a Toronto icon - though strange considering they weren't unique to Toronto. I think pretty much all of the larger Canadian cities (Montreal, Vancouver, and Ottawa for sure) used them to some extent in the past. But for whatever reason Toronto took them most to heart.

It's been a few years since I took the Thornhill sign pic, but for some reason I want to say it was actually made of wood!
Is that possible? Any Thornhill residents who can verify?

 

[the lemur]

The Thornhill sign features one of my annoyances when out in the country: the use of 'circa' (i.e., 'approximately') instead of 'established' or 'founded'. It is documented that Thornhill was founded in 1794, not somewhere within a range of years, so 'circa' is unnecessarily vague, and yet one town after another in Ontario makes this error.

 

[EVCco]

Well, thankfully, they at least managed to refrain from "Ye Olde Village of Thornhill," or some such thing...

 

[r937]

Well, thankfully, they at least managed to refrain from "Ye Olde Village of Thornhill," or some such thing...

interesting that you should bring this up in relation to the name thornhill, because the word "ye" as in "ye olde shoppe" is pronounced not as "ye" but as "the" -- because the letter Y in this case is actually the letter thorn

see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorn_(letter)#Modern_English

 

[EVCco]

Very good dot-connecting, r937!
If that were the case I suppose I wouldn't mind a "Ye Olde Village of Thornhill" afterall.

But I've still yet to find an excuse for "Olde East York Village"...

 

[ShonTron]

Anyone remember the illuminated plastic(?) "lantern"-type street signs that characterized small-town-Ontario locales like Milton in the 60s/70s?

Georgetown had those too, they remained up to about 1990 or so.

 

[Goldie]

But I've still yet to find an excuse for "Olde East York Village"...

I don't believe East York would qualify in any case - it was never a village.
All the time I lived there it was the Township of East York.
Perhaps Todmorden Village was once a part of East York.

 

[adma]

Georgetown had those too, they remained up to about 1990 or so.

Ah, so you know what I'm talking about. (Sounds like a Halton County thing, though I don't know where else they might possibly have been used)

 

[EVCco]

I don't believe East York would qualify in any case - it was never a village.
All the time I lived there it was the Township of East York.
Perhaps Todmorden Village was once a part of East York.

Quite so! And in terms of what eventually became the Borough of East York - Todmorden, Leaside, and Little York (Dentonia) all predate any sort of significant development at Coxwell & O'Connor that one might construe as a "village" - so it isn't really that "olde" either...

 

[EVCco]

Another street sign outlier I came across the other day up in the Governor's Bridge area:

Metro Works/Highway style white-on-green, but with a rather home-made look about it.
Located in the middle of a traffic island on Bayview. I suspect it might just be a temporary from when they were switching over to the new signs, or something, but it also looks fairly old. Any thoughts?

 

[r937]

Located in the middle of a traffic island on Bayview. I suspect it might just be a temporary from when they were switching over to the new signs, or something, but it also looks fairly old. Any thoughts?

that pole was replaced last year when it was knocked down by an inattentive driver

 

[the lemur]

Another street sign outlier I came across the other day up in the Governor's Bridge area:

Metro Works/Highway style white-on-green, but with a rather home-made look about it.
Located in the middle of a traffic island on Bayview. I suspect it might just be a temporary from when they were switching over to the new signs, or something, but it also looks fairly old. Any thoughts?

The home-made aspect may be from repainting; the white-on-green could be the legacy of Metro works and/or the fact that it is located in East York.

Google Street View continuity glitch!

No southbound sign:
http://goo.gl/maps/dQoCv

Southbound sign:
http://goo.gl/maps/wQPCU

 

[EVCco]

I wonder if the southbound sign was knocked off when the car hit the pole?

As for the remaining sign, it almost looks like it could have been painted over one of those blue rounded-corner major street signs you find in Scarborough and North York. Perhaps another case of sign recycling:

 

[r937]

I wonder if the southbound sign was knocked off when the car hit the pole?

my bad, it was the other pole, and it was march 19 of this year (had to dig through my archives a bit)

 

[can332]

My guess would be a one-off East York sign. East York didn't usually put street signs on centre medians, but may have felt a need to do so in this instance due to the speed of the traffic on Bayview. The work order may have said "make it a bit oversized", resulting in some freehanding at the sign shop!